Oil/Gas drilling has become “unconventional.”

Watch out for Toxic, Radioactive Frack Waste!

THE LATEST: Much of the toxic radioactive waste from fracking comes from other states and is being trucked to Ohio and injected into the ground beneath our feet and spread onto our landfills, which eventually leach these toxins and radioactive materials into ground water.

This site is meant to be a resource to help you understand fracking and its many inherent problems, and to help you make informed decisions for yourself, decisions about how to help protect your community. Visit here often to keep up on legislative changes, industry positions, current news articles, and more…

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June 26, 2017/2 Comments/in Articles, News and Information /by Leann LeiterAn Ohio family took joy in raising their kids and cattle at their farmhouse, built in 1853 with crooked walls and no indoor bathrooms. When they leased land to fracking activity, however, the “beep, beep, beep” of heavy truck traffic kept them up all night, and a cow died after drinking a strange fluid flowing on the land during the cold of winter. They dedicated their retirement savings to moving and building a new home, only to soon after receive a compressor station as their neighbor – close enough to hear the engines at all hours and loud enough to make them dread even walking out to their mailbox.

During the upswing of a boom-and-bust cycle of the gas industry in Greene County, the influx of outside workers and the high demand on rental housing resulted in one particular family being unable to secure an apartment. Without adequate housing, their children were temporarily taken from their custody.

The elephant in the room that smells like natural gas

A curious thing happened in the aftermath of President Trump attempting to sign away the past eight years of work on climate and clean energy: The public face of progress didn’t flinch. From north to south and east to west, utilities and businesses and states and cities swore their decarbonization compasses were unswerving; yes, they said, we’re still closing coal plants, and yes, yes!, we’re still building ever more the wind and solar – it just makes sense.

But here’s why all the subsequent commentary reiterating the inevitability of coal’s decline and cheering the unsinkable strength of renewables’ rise was right in facts, but incomplete in message:

Coal is closing. Renewables are rising. But right now, we need to be talking about natural gas.

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Corporate State Attempts to Choke Off Citizens’ Initiatives

by Tish O’Dell

JANUARY 28, 2017

Many of us in Ohio were duped into voting against our own best interests on Election Day in November 2015. Issue 2 was presented by the 1% as an antimonopoly initiative, promising to protect We the People from monopolies, oligopolies, and cartels.

Who wouldn’t vote for that?

Some saw through the smoke screen and voted against it when they realized it was an attack on grassroots democracy. But the majority went to the polls and, lulled by the propaganda, voted to make statewide initiatives even more difficult for us to place on the ballot.

It wasn’t about stopping monopolies, oligopolies and cartels. It was about stopping us. It was about choking off citizen initiatives.

Doctors call for state ban on drilling and fracking

The Pennsylvania Medical Society’s 300-member House of Delegates unanimously approved a resolution calling for the fracking moratorium, registry and research at its annual meeting on Sunday.

By Don Hopey / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 28, 2016

The Pennsylvania Medical Society has called for a moratorium on new shale gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing and is urging the state to establish an independent health registry and start studying fracking’s public health impacts.

“We do support a moratorium at this point because of questions that have been raised,” said Charles Cutler, a Montgomery County doctor of internal medicine and the newly elected president of the 16,000-member medical society. “Those questions now point to the need for a registry and more science and research to give us a better understanding about whether fracking is safe and what the risk is.”

The society’s 300-member House of Delegates unanimously approved a resolution at its annual meeting Sunday in Hershey calling for the fracking moratorium, registry and research.

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MORE THAN A PIPELINE: IT’S A TOXIC INDUSTRIAL INFRASTRUCTURE

By Mina Hamilton

A little known aspect of gas pipelines is that they require large compressor stations to help concentrate and move the pressurized gas along.As compressor stations release large amounts of methane, plus other toxins, they contribute significantly to global warming. They are noisy, humming 24/7, and are subject to dangerous explosions and fires. At public meetings and during the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission application process, gas pipeline companies have not revealed the number, location and size of planned compressor stations.

Interactive map: Bakken crude on Ohio rails

Every week, millions of gallons of highly flammable Bakken crude oil are moved by rail through Ohio to refineries along the East Coast. Railroad companies are required to report to the state estimated averages of how many trains carrying 1 million gallons or more of Bakken crude oil move through each county each week. Crude-oil trains travel through the heart of Cleveland and Columbus, and they pass through or near Akron, Toledo and Youngstown.

Remember Mark Jacobson, the Stanford University Professor who during a Late Show With David Letterman appearance said we already have enough wind to power the entire world “seven times over?”

That wasn’t hyperbole—Jacobson believes it and his team at the Solutions Project has unveiled a 50-state plan on how the U.S. could shed itself from oil, coal and nuclear sources. It comes in the form of a large, interactive map that provides a plan and projection for each state when you click on it.Here are a few examples of what the map has to offer:

“The new roadmap is designed to provide each state a first step toward a renewable future,” said Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford. “It provides all of the basic information, such as how many wind turbines and solar panels would be needed to power each state, how much land area would be required, what would be the cost and cost savings, how many jobs would be created, how much pollution-related mortality and global-warming emissions would be avoided.”

Dr. Ingraffea’s General Recommendations on Fracking:

Where fracking is not yet occurring, it should be banned, and the use of all hydrocarbon fuels should be reduced as fast as possible. Also, the use of renewable, non-hydrocarbon fuels should be vastly accelerated.